Still worth to buy a 1st gen iPad Pro 12.9 inch

Still worth to buy a 2nd hand 1st gen iPad Pro 12.9 inch 128GB for $450 considering that you can buy a iPad 2018 128GB for the same amount of money with a better processor. Just curious what people think about the speed of the 12.9 inch 1st gen that own or have owned this tablet?

Comments

Yes, still worth it if you get a good price. The large screen is more conducive to iOS music making, than a faster processor- audio isn’t that processor intensive, compared to games and video production, unless you are wanting complex sessions with lots of hungry software instruments and plugins.

The software on iOS hasn’t really progressed to take advantage of faster processors and more ram- I think you would need that when we have a mega sampler, with good built in libraries, like Kontakt. Or ability to use desktop vst’s or AU’s.

@Processaurus said:
Yes, still worth it if you get a good price. The large screen is more conducive to iOS music making

Yes. If your eyesight is going it's worth every penny to the get big screen. It's wonderful for displaying sheet music for example.

For heavy App use newer tends to be better typically with more RAM, Storage, Cores and CPU Clock speed for the same $'s but re-furb'ed and used markets are the best way to negotiate better pricing over Apple's controlled distribution network. They rarely discount products and usually it's for education purposes.

I just upgraded my 1st gen 12.9 yesterday (my new 12.9 Pro finally came in). I'd say that since the basic 2018 iPad doesn't have the 120 Hz screen and TrueTone the old 12.9 is still an awesome performer. Those are two of the main reason I upgraded from my 2015. For what I was doing the performance was good and the size difference is huge.

I just sold mine 12,9 for half the price. It was a hard thing to do, because it’s still working like a charm.
It’s still holding up quite good. No problems with using Auria Pro or Cubasis.
I now have the 2017 version, but I loved the slim nice Mark1.

The Geekbench 4 scores are similar, for what its worth, with the 2018 9.7" slightly faster in the benchmarks.

@Hmtx said:
On paper the CPU is only slightly better on the 2018, but it is also driving less pixels, so I wonder if it actually performs significantly better.

Both have 60Hz panels, but the 2015 12.9" is pushing 2732x2048 (5595136 pixels) versus the 2018 9.7" 2048x1536 (3145728 pixels). That's almost 70% more pixels! I guess the M9 GPU does most of that work, but how much more work does the A9x CPU have to do? Neither have True Tone displays.

Plus the 2015 12.9" has 4GB of RAM versus 2GB, but how much of that is 'allocated' for pushing all of those extra pixels? Both use LPDDR4 memory.

The A9x is a dual-core, while the A10 is a quad-core with 2 efficient cores and 2 performance cores, but only one core type can be active at a time, either the high-performance or low-power cores, but not both. The A9x has no L3 cache due to its significant DRAM bandwidth, but the 2018 9.7" also uses LPDDR4 memory and its A10 has a 4MB L3 cache. What does all this mean? Historically, the more expensive Intel CPUs have more L3 cache...???

The 2015 12.9" has USB 3.0, and the 2018 9.7" has USB 2.0. Not sure how much that matters since most audio interfaces are USB 2.0. Both use Bluetooth 4.2. 2015 12.9" has 4 speakers versus 2. Both have headphone jacks. The 2018 9.7" could be the last iPad with one?!

I've thought (a lot too much obviously) about upgarding my Air 1, and these 2 models are at the top of my list. Value is key for me. Sorry to add to the confusion.

Most of the time my 2016 9.7 Pro problems is it runs out of memory with only 2GB RAM when using a lot of modern day Synths inside DAWS so I’m looking at the 2016 12.9 Pro second hand to upgrade just that.

Thanks for everybody who gave some advise. To keep you all in the loop I didn't buy the iPad Pro 12.9. I played a while with it but I really thought the format was just to big to carry with me. Also I found the format too huge in one hand. Maybe something you get used to but I use the iPad just as a tablet in my hands, with one hand holding it and the other hand using finger(s) for input. Can understand if you put it in a studio setup or use it flat it's great. But that's not how I use it.

12.9” iPad Pro gen 1 works really good for me
The concerns I would have, would be about the remaining battery life ...mines at about 84%
Performance dies with the battery.
I think it’s 150.00 for me to get the battery replaced if I need to later in 2019